Mark Zuckerberg Slams Apple Vision Pro ‘Fan Boys’

By Shubhendu Vatsa - News

Published: 19 Feb 2024

While many have lauded Apple’s new Vision Pro headset as a VR game-changer, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered a contrasting and rather unsurprising take on the headset. In a recent Instagram video (see below), Zuckerberg reviewed the new Vision Pro and directly compared it to his company’s Quest 3, highlighting the Quest 3’s more affordable price and also calling it “the better product period.”

“So I finally tried Apple’s Vision Pro and I have to say that before this, I expected that Quest would be the better value for most people since it’s really good and like seven times less expensive, but after using (Vision Pro) I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, it’s the better product period,” Zuckerberg said. “They have different strengths, but overall Quest is better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for.”

While being filmed with the Quest 3’s mixed reality video passthrough system, Zuckerberg highlighted its capabilities and explained how Meta designed the headset to be suitable for active use, beyond just sitting down. He also compared the Quest 3’s passthrough features to those of the Vision Pro, emphasising the Quest 3’s strengths. Zuckerberg then went on to discuss the trade-offs Apple made to achieve its high-resolution display in a wearable form factor, highlighting the Quest 3’s lighter weight (120 grams less) and potential for longer comfort.

“I was surprised by how many trade offs they had to make in the quality of the device — in comfort and ergonomics and other aspects of the display and artifacts to get to that (higher resolution),” Zuckerberg said. “We designed it to weigh 120 grams less, which makes a really big difference on your face.” He claimed the Quest 3 offers more freedom of movement than the Apple Vision Pro, thanks to its lack of a wired battery pack and wider field of view. He also highlighted the Quest’s larger library of “immersive” content compared to Apple.

Despite throwing shade at the Vision Pro, Zuck admitted a couple of things it did well. Firstly, he praised its “really nice” eye tracking, suggesting a similar feature might return in future Meta headsets. He also acknowledged the Vision Pro’s higher resolution display, which he also found “really nice.” Zuckerberg even took some not-so-subtle digs at Apple, saying, “When I look around, it seems like there are a lot of people who just assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and it costs $3,000 more. But honestly, I’m pretty surprised that Quest is so much better for the vast majority of things that people use these headsets for with that price differential.”

However, shots flew when the Meta CEO said that some Apple devotees might “get upset” by anyone questioning Apple’s dominance in new categories. “I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple’s going to be the leader in a new category,” he said. “But the reality is that every generation of computing has an open and a closed model. And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won, but it’s not always that way.”

Zuckerberg argued that Meta, by embracing the open model, is well-positioned to win the mixed reality headset race, similar to how Microsoft’s open model triumphed in the PC era and concluded by expressing his strong belief in the eventual success of the open source. “If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner, and in this next generation Meta is going to be the open model. And I really want to make sure that the open model wins out. Again, the future is not yet written,” Zuckerberg said.

While Zuckerberg makes a few valid criticisms of the Vision Pro, such as lack of content, price, portability, and weight, the Vision Pro is certainly miles ahead of any mixed reality or VR headset on the market right now and has managed to take VR from a niche gaming accessory to something we could see people doing work and so much more on (albeit limited by being a gen one product). Meta’s VR investments haven’t yielded immediate returns, and while Quest 3 has a massive gaming and content library, that could soon change as more developers and companies start releasing apps for the Vision Pro.